There is a cloud hov­er­ing over T&T's busi­ness world that promis­es great prof­itabil­i­ty us­ing in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy (IT) and com­mu­ni­ca­tion sup­port. Mi­crosoft's Cloud Com­put­ing, al­so dubbed The Cloud, or sim­pli­fied as "soft­ware as a ser­vice" is be­ing tagged as the next big thing since the cre­ation of the In­ter­net it­self, and will utilise its fore­run­ner in bring­ing ad­van­tages to lo­cal busi­ness­es via a re­fined net­work of soft­ware ap­pli­ca­tion feeds. This Next Gen­er­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy utilised by well-known ap­pli­ca­tions such as e-mail (Ya­hoo! Mail, Win­dows Live Hot­mail), on­line con­tent de­liv­ery (YouTube, Flickr) and on­line ap­pli­ca­tions (eBay, Mi­crosoft Of­fice Live), works in the busi­ness are­na as a gate­way where firms do not need in-house IT sys­tems, but in­stead are able to ac­cess da­ta stored on re­mote da­ta cen­tres.

These cen­tres trans­mit soft­ware ap­pli­ca­tions and oth­er da­ta to a range of mo­bile or sta­tion­ary de­vices and IT sys­tems-a method some­what akin to the way elec­tric­i­ty or phone ser­vice providers re­lay their ser­vices. The ser­vice is al­so dis­patched "on-de­mand," al­low­ing users to pay on­ly for what they use each time. In this way, the Cloud has the ca­pac­i­ty to al­low lo­cal busi­ness­es to op­er­ate and com­mu­ni­cate ef­fi­cient­ly and cost-ef­fec­tive­ly, giv­ing them the ad­van­tage they need to do big busi­ness lo­cal­ly and on a glob­al scale. Cloud com­put­ing tech­nol­o­gy then, could prove to be just what the doc­tor or­dered for lo­cal busi­ness­es, and sup­ports gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion that the ex­pan­sion, avail­abil­i­ty, and use of in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy, is one of its sev­en pil­lars for lo­cal eco­nom­ic growth.

"The pow­er of the Cloud will trans­form the way we do busi­ness, as nev­er seen be­fore," said Mar­i­ana Cas­tro, gen­er­al man­ag­er at Mi­crosoft, Latam New Mar­kets. "It will give busi­ness­es the abil­i­ty to think big, act faster, and do more with much less," added Cas­tro, a sea­soned pro­fes­sion­al with a 20-year ca­reer at the com­pa­ny. "Cloud com­put­ing is chang­ing the IT in­dus­try as we know it. It com­pris­es flex­i­ble and re­li­able util­i­ties, at­trac­tive cost mod­els, and will help lev­el the play­ing field in the busi­ness are­na by al­low­ing busi­ness­es of all sizes to ac­cess on-de­mand, scal­able com­put­ing re­sources for da­ta, ap­pli­ca­tions and pro­cess­ing pow­er," she not­ed.

The good news for lo­cal busi­ness is that the Cloud is af­ford­able to even small and start-up en­ter­pris­es, fa­cil­i­tat­ing growth and ex­pan­sion with ease, and with­out the pro­hib­i­tive costs of set­ting up an in-house IT struc­ture. Caribbean Air­lines Ltd (CAL) is a firm be­liev­er in the mer­its of Mi­crosoft's cloud com­put­ing. The re­gion's air car­ri­er has em­barked on trans­fer­ring el­e­ments of its im­mense and in­tri­cate com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy sys­tem to the cloud, in­vest­ing trust in the tech­nol­o­gy to meet its de­mands for ef­fi­cient, un­in­ter­rupt­ed ser­vice to staff and cus­tomers. "When I saw the prod­uct, I be­came ex­cit­ed be­cause it was at a time when we were try­ing to re­duce our costs," said Si­mon Fa­bi­en, man­ag­er, ser­vice de­liv­ery, in­for­ma­tion sys­tems de­part­ment at CAL. "We have signed up and are now prepar­ing to tran­si­tion," he ex­plained.

Fa­bi­en high­light­ed that with the Mi­crosoft Cloud, CAL has the po­ten­tial to pay on­ly one-third of its usu­al out­lay for com­put­ing costs, and ad­di­tion­al­ly, the cloud sys­tem of­fered more val­ue for mon­ey as the e-mail mail­box size is 50 times big­ger than its pre­vi­ous provider's. He al­so stressed that the Cloud pack­age of­fered more flex­i­bil­i­ty and this will be max­imised by CAL who will ini­tial­ly ac­cess a pack­age com­pris­ing the Cloud's Mail­box, Share­point, Of­fice Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Live, Of­fice Live Meet­ing and Black­ber­ry ser­vices.

Ac­cord­ing to Fa­bi­en, a ma­jor ad­van­tage of the sys­tem is its "desk­less" ca­pac­i­ty in that users do not need a ded­i­cat­ed com­put­er to ac­cess their in­for­ma­tion-they just log in­to any avail­able ter­mi­nal. This, he not­ed, works well for the com­pa­ny since many staff such as pi­lots and flight at­ten­dants do not have a ded­i­cat­ed desk. An­oth­er di­rect ben­e­fit of the Cloud to CAL's op­er­a­tions he not­ed is its Share­point fea­ture.

"Share­point al­lows a more seam­less col­lab­o­ra­tion among staff," he said.

"Many of our staff are at dif­fer­ent parts of the world at any giv­en time, and can­not at­tend meet­ings in per­son. Share­point will al­low us to com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er and hold meet­ings via lap­tops."

Fa­bi­en not­ed that the tran­si­tion is ex­pect­ed to take ap­prox­i­mate­ly three weeks to com­plete, and the process is be­ing aid­ed through re­li­able Mi­crosoft rec­om­mend­ed sup­port.

For sure, the tech­nol­o­gy gi­ant iden­ti­fies one of the biggest ben­e­fits of the Cloud, as its po­ten­tial to free up busi­ness­es from the shack­les of deal­ing with re­peat IT tasks. The com­pa­ny re­cent­ly launched Win­dows In­tune PC man­age­ment soft­ware tai­lored for those man­agers with lim­it­ed IT staff, al­low­ing one per­son to man­age a net­work of PCs from the Cloud, from any lo­ca­tion.

"We're find­ing that small and medi­um busi­ness­es are quick to adopt the Cloud be­cause they don't have lega­cy in­fra­struc­ture to deal with and they un­der­stand the val­ue in not hav­ing to main­tain their own IT sys­tems. Be­cause they don't have to make cap­i­tal in­vest­ment on in­fra­struc­ture, the Cloud pro­vides the abil­i­ty to achieve pos­i­tive economies of scale for their en­ter­prise," said Cas­tro.

CAL's con­fi­dence in cloud com­put­ing may well be a sig­nal for the sys­tem be­ing wel­comed in­to oth­er large and small busi­ness­es, a pos­i­tive out­come, which rais­es a per­ti­nent is­sue-the present lo­cal band­width land­scape. Wide scale adop­tion of the cloud lo­cal­ly will ne­ces­si­tate a need for greater wire­less pres­ence and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty across the coun­try. Hav­ing fore­cast­ed the need, Mi­crosoft has al­ready made moves to help en­sure that the in­ter­net fa­cil­i­ties are broad­ened to ef­fec­tive­ly ac­com­mo­date the new tech­nol­o­gy.

"Hav­ing suf­fi­cient band­width is es­sen­tial in the world of Cloud Com­put­ing, and we are work­ing close­ly with op­er­a­tors to en­sure that the sup­port and re­sources are there to with­stand and sup­port all that is need­ed in the Cloud for users," said Cas­tro.

In­for­ma­tion safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty are al­so fac­tored among the con­cerns of po­ten­tial cloud users. Cas­tro al­lays such con­cerns by giv­ing the as­sur­ance of Mi­crosoft's track record.

"Mi­crosoft un­der­stands that se­cu­ri­ty and da­ta pri­va­cy, com­ply­ing with stan­dards and reg­u­la­tions, and the man­age­ment of risks and ac­cess con­trols is very im­por­tant to our cus­tomers. Our da­ta cen­ters com­ply with HIPAA, SOX and oth­er key in­dus­try stan­dards for se­cu­ri­ty in­for­ma­tion. Very few com­pa­nies can af­ford the mas­sive in­vest­ments Mi­crosoft is mak­ing in the fu­ture of cloud com­put­ing.